Clandestine conflict

Beyond conventional conflict in Afghanistan, the US is now increasingly engaged in a number of covert wars run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against al Qaeda-affiliated groups across the globe.

The most rapidly expanding area of operations appears to be in East Africa, specifically in Somalia where the CIA is said to have a heavily guarded base at Mogadishu's Aden Adde International airport. It is also rumored to have a detention center under the headquarters of Somalia's Western-backed Transitional Federal Government's (TFG) National Security Agency where terror suspects from Kenya, Uganda and other East African countries are allegedly held and interrogated by the CIA and other Western intelligence agents.

According to a recent report in the US magazine The Nation, as well as rendering suspected jihadists seized in East Africa to the interrogation center, the CIA is also operating its covert campaign against al Shabab, Somalia's main al Qaeda-linked insurgent group. Up to 30 CIA operatives, backed by military intelligence agents, are said to be orchestrating events in the Somali capital.

The CIA mission, jointly run with the US military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, snatch raids by CIA-trained Somali agents, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations in Mogadishu and beyond.

In one raid on September 14, 2009, thought to be the first targeted killing operation in Somalia authorized by President Barack Obama, The Nation reports that a team from the JSOC's elite US counterterrorism force, which included a number of Navy SEALs, was flown into Mogadishu from a US warship off Somalia's coast in broad daylight. The team attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the leader of al Qaeda in Somalia, from the air before landing and collecting two bodies from the carnage, including Nabhan's.

"The US is engaged in a confrontation with al Qaeda and its allies around the world," Dr. Walid Phares, advisor to the Anti-Terrorism Caucus of the US Congress, told Deutsche Welle. "And it is a fact that the US is engaged in a covert war in Somalia, as it is also in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The drone attacks are the most obvious of these covert wars. But the West needs to develop a wider war of ideas to win."

Renditions and rehabilitated Islamists

The Nation report, which was backed up a month later by a similar expose in the New York Times, also alleges that the CIA is using mercenaries to train Somali assassination teams to hit al Shabab and has co-opted a number of local warlords - including former al Qaeda affiliates and fighters - into a fledgling national army.

The Nation suggests that the warlords have been awarded control over government ministries or given military rank in return for allocating their forces to the fight against their former brothers in al Shabab, much in the same way that the US attempted to recruit former Sunni insurgents in Iraq with its Awakening Councils policy in 2006.

The United States appears to be taking a two-pronged approach to Somalia with the CIA operation counter-balanced by the financial and logistical support of AMISOM, the 9,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

A draft defense spending bill which was approved in late June by the Senate Armed Services Committee earmarked some $75 million (56 million euros) in counter-terrorism aid to Somalia. AMISOM was one of the main recipients along with a number of undisclosed US beneficiaries - however, none of the aid was destined for the country's Transitional Federal Government. In fact, the TFG appears to be cut out of many of Washington's plans for Somalia.

With the US lacking any real faith in the TFG's efforts to fight al Shabab, the main aim of the CIA operation appears to be the creation of an indigenous counter-terrorism force that the agency controls with the help of the mercenaries it employs from private security companies such as Bancroft Global Development.

Obama's CIA policy

The Somali operations are just another example of how increasingly militarized the CIA has become in recent years as the administration of President Barack Obama embraced black ops in favor of the policies of his predecessor George W. Bush, who was an advocate of deploying large conventional forces on the ground - a less efficient way of targeting global terror groups.

"As the US draws down its forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, it is critical that the Obama administration compensate for the loss of that in-theater capability with stepped up covert operations, investment in drone technology, and an expanded mission for Special Forces units," says Clare M. Lopez, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy and retired CIA operations officer.

"Al Qaeda now has functioning franchise affiliates operating on the Arabian Peninsula as well as in North, West and East Africa. This is in addition to al Qaeda's expansion in to East Asia, with affiliates like Jamaat Islamiyya across Malaysia and Indonesia."

The Obama administration has vastly expanded the footprint of covert US operations during its first term; drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, such as those which killed high-profile al Qaeda operatives like Anwar al-Awlaki and its second-in-command Atiyah abd al-Rahman, have increased and have proved very successful. Meanwhile deepened cooperation between the CIA and US military Special Forces has led to an increased efficiency which seemed impossible a decade ago.

Covert concept

"Warfare has moved substantially away from the conventional concept with special operations and conventional forces melding more closely with the US intelligence community and adapting as a team to the conflicts in which they are currently engaged," Robert Blitzer, a senior fellow at defense and security consultants ICF International in Fairfax, Virginia and retired FBI Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, told Deutsche Welle.

As well as investing in drone technology which reduces the need for "boots on the ground" when it comes to hunting for terror suspects, the US government has also doubled the number of Special Forces troops in the last 10 years. Policy has moved to a model where manned counter-terrorism operations are carried out by small teams of elite troops backed by improved intelligence sources.

"Covert operations were stepped up after 9/11 - and to a greater degree after the Iraq war began - when the US Defense Department made a decision to increase numbers of special operators worldwide," W. Thomas Smith Jr., a former US Marine and an expert on international terrorism and counterterrorism, told Deutsche Welle.

"Moreover, US conventional forces in the 21st century have developed myriad unconventional capabilities, and they work shoulder-to-shoulder with special operators and CIA clandestine operations officers on a regular basis."

This improved cooperation and coordination on a personnel and technical level is the only way to defeat asymmetrical threats, says Blitzer.

"This is being driven by the kind of adversaries we now face and it's not just a matter of budget but it's also a matter of what works to defeat the enemy. The US has had several successes recently including bin Laden and al-Awlaki. These successes have been covert action successes not battlefield 'unit on unit' successes."

Author: Nick Amies

Editor: Rob Mudge